You'd be happy too if you were a yellow cartoon ball with a smile to rival Julia Roberts. (Images from Ladybird Books)
Landing pages, conversion rate optimization, bounce rate, blah, blah, blah, blah, yada yada yada.
As important as all of those terms and concepts are, sometimes you need to step back a bit and look at things in a more playful manner.
I find metaphor can greatly aid the process of communication – although as you’ll infer from the title of this post – my examples can at times be a bit of a stretch. Hopefully, this bunch are clear enough to mean something.
And so, with no further posturing or technical jargon, I present to you – The MR. MEN Guide to Landing Pages, Conversion and Absurd Metaphor.
The Mr. Men show and book series were one of my favourite things as a kid, so this is my way of an homage to their enduring coolness as a brand.
They were created by Roger Hargreaves in the 70s and have been an evolving group of characters in children’s TV and books ever since.
I hope you found this little design exercise enjoyable. Please let me know if you did and share it with anyone you think might get a giggle from it.
Fantastic! I love it… thanks for the laugh!
Awesome! :)
Great job! Very fun to read!
Nothing is ever quite as funny as the truth! That’s hilarious (and oddly inspiring). Great post.
Thanks Scott,
I’m glad you enjoyed it. It was a blast to write. I just noticed your addition to the new column on Search Engine Land. Looking forward to checking that out.
Here’s a link for anyone interested: http://searchengineland.com/conversion-science-as-a-creative-mission-26645
Great post for me to read on a Friday. These “characters” can be frustrating in real life, but it's fun to see them as cartoons. It helps to confirm how silly we can be.
Loved Reading this post, many thanks for the information.
This post = Awesome!
Great analogy! I really like it!
Recently I started posting interestnig analogies I found on the web blog.ygolana.com. I thought it could be a good idea to create a place where people can share useful analogies such as yours.
hey Oli, did you make the infograph? What did you use? Photoshop or…?
Hey Dino,
All hand drawn in Photoshop (except for the characters – which were sourced off the web).
LOVED it!!
Glad you enjoyed it Naomi :)
LMBO good one!!!
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Really great blogpost ;)
Thanks Kim, fun to do.
:) I can see that… keep up the good work ;)
Great cartoon. But I don’t understand why Mr. Happy doesn’t like Mr Worry’s obsession with A/B Testing?
Haha, yeah, it’s more out of concern for Mr. Worry not getting too stressed. It’s based on part of Mr. Worry’s character where he keeps cycling through new ideas all the time – and Mr. Happy thinks he should chill out a bit (stop those wrinkles from appearing on his forehead).
Characters aside, a healthy obsession with A/B testing is always a good thing in the real world :)
What a fun and interesting way to show a guide to landing pages. Love it!
OMG (teenage reaction) – I had so much fun writing and designing this post It’s rare that you can come across an idea that works as well as this. Shows the power of characters when telling a story. Burt then, I guess that’s the whole point.
Fantastic Olli. You should win an award for your posts. I too like using analogies and posts. I told a client recently that they were driving a banger and were wondering why they couldn’t keep up with the Rolls Royce (ie competing website). This stuck in their mind so much that it won me the contract.
Thank you! Wow. Glad you enjoyed my metaphorical indulgence (I cant resist it or really communicate any other way). Glad your instance landed you a gig too! That’s awesome.
Cheers
Oli
[...] The MR. MEN Guide to Landing Pages, Conversion & Absurd Metaphors [...]
haha it doesnt matter how many times i see this it’ll always be hilarious
This gave me a much needed smile to break up the workday, thanks Oli!
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Oh man I love this one!
Cute post!
Some additional by-standers:
Mr Messy: Who has spelling/grammar/punctuation errors in their content.
Mr Lazy: Has a new product/service, but hasn’t updated their website, and so no-one actually knows about it.
Mr Nonsense: Who sends out spam emails, and other unwelcome e-clutter.
Little Miss Chatterbox: The waffler. You can’t finish a full page on their website, because you fall asleep half way through, and you never truly know the point they were trying to make.
Mr Rude: The one who doesn’t deal well with bad reviews, and instead bites back a retort, rather than apologising to the customer and trying to understand how to improve their business to create more happy customers.
Mr Daydream: Who puts up a website and instantly thinks he will be overrun by customers wanting to buy his wares.
Mr Quiet: Who is scared of social media, and afraid to market himself.
Mr Wrong: He has products on his website that you can no longer buy, and prices that are out of date (or just incorrect from the get go).
Little Miss Stubborn: Convinced that “her way is right”, she can’t entertain the advice of others, and so is stuck doing the same old thing, with the same old result.
Little Miss Wise: The expert that we go to for advice. She has our trust and our respect.
Little Miss Fun: SEOMoz springs to mind – I love their sense of humour, and a spoonful of chuckle helps the SEO medicine go down.
Little Miss Helpful: The awesome companies and people that go out of their way to help you. They want you to succeed, and they take great delight in helping you get there. They are the gems, the forum supporters, the goodies of the business world. Long may they reign!
That’s an awesome (and big) list of other characters Sara!! Thanks for sharing.